Three Food Service Trends from one of the world’s biggest restaurant shows

NRA 2017

Three Food Service Trends from one of the world’s biggest restaurant shows

5 minutes

About 67,000 food services pros from around the globe converged on Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center for the National Restaurant Association’s annual trade show in late May. These are the people who own, manage, buy and sell for some of the industry’s largest brands, and those that we spoke to had questions about technology that blurs lines between business solutions and consumer electronics.

Major food service businesses are increasing investments in technology as a way to improve convenience and the customer experience. They’re also trying new digital endeavors to appeal to a fresh crop of eaters seeking better quality food and an experience that incorporates their gadgets. Whether it’s a tablet-based POS software or an app that allows customers to engage with restaurants on their mobile devices, restaurants are moving toward technologies that look more and more like the tech consumers use in their daily lives. Here’s a look a few other of the most interesting ideas from the show.

  1. Co-operative innovation

Some very exciting ideas in food service come from startups, and Panasonic has a track record of working with small companies to provide end-to-end solutions to customers. It benefits the entrepreneur who has an innovation, but may be struggling to bring it to the marketplace or to introduce it to more customers. The small company gains exposure to the engineering and tech resources of a global organization. Perhaps the biggest winner is the food service provider because it sees a steady stream of solutions that can help to increase customer engagement. Panasonic’s work with entrepreneurs take different forms, from partnerships to investments to acquisitions. One such example is Quick Service Software Inc., known for back office software to manage information from the POS and aid in all aspects of managing a quick service restaurant.

  1. Immersive tech

For example, those who visited the Panasonic booth this year were able to experience the company’s own twist on this concept with our LinkRay technology. Using visible light communication, LinkRay delivers mobile content by enabling ordinary smartphones to read IDs sent from LED transmitters, such as displays, signboards and spotlights, and to connect to associated mobile content. Applied to restaurants, this technology allows consumers to view expanded menus, nutrition information and even order from their smart phones.

  1. Step savers and other productivity hacks

Upscale dining at the movies is a trend sweeping across the U.S., according to Nation’s Restaurant News, which reports that foodservice spending at movie theaters has risen 20 percent compared with a year ago. “Many major movie-theater chains now offer full chef-driven menus complete with alcoholic beverages and seat-side service,” according to the article. One such trendsetter is Flix Brewhouse, which welcomes people with craft beers, fresh and familiar food and blockbuster movies.

To simplify the serving process — and help prevent servers from interrupt action scenes on the big screen — Flix Brewhouse introduced to its locations a feature-packed tablet that would integrate with our existing network infrastructure and most importantly to have ruggedization — and to last without trading off features.

By allowing its servers to present the check and take the payment all with the same device in a single stop at the table, it saves the time that goes into the back-and-forth between dropping the check, returning to pick up the payment, walking to the credit card machine and running the payment before, finally, dropping off the completed bill for the customer to sign and leave a tip. Matthew Baizer, COO of Flix Brewhouse, say that technology provided an opportunity to increase speed of service at their locations.

"We've seen our guest satisfaction and speed of service scores escalate a lot," Mr. Baizer says.Watch a video on how Flix Brewhouse uses mobility to boost customer service:

With this technologies becoming more commonplace while also making transactions easier for both consumers and businesses alike, it seems a pretty safe bet that restaurant technologies will continue to make their way from the kitchen to the other side of the counter. Automation will become a larger part in creating a seamless experience for QSR customers.

Authors
Jeff Pinc - Director of Food Services at Panasonic
Pinc has more than 15 years experience in the QSR industry.

Technology’s impact on your summer ice cream parlor

icecreamblog

Technology’s impact on your summer ice cream parlor

6 minute read

While consumers may spend their summer seeking exotic ice cream flavors—Lobster, Cheetos and Spruce Tip are whipped up, ready for the adventurous eater—savvy businesses are bringing on new technologies to help figure out things like what new flavors will sell. 

Just south of Cincinnati, across the Kentucky border, vegan and vegetarian ice cream and sandwich shop Piper’s Cafe is leveraging big data to keep up with its customers: “We are growing and we can't remember all of our customers by name and face any longer. I'm looking forward to seeing what patterns my new regular guests fall into and adapting," says co-owner Chip Atkins in a report from The Week. Cloud and mobile technology mean that ice cream shops and other small restaurants can take advantage of the kind of big data insights that large restaurant owners have been using to lower costs and boost operational efficiencies. 
 

How the restaurant industry is reading tech disruptions

Not all restaurant innovations come in the form of new flavors or food items. Some important breakthroughs arise as solutions to common problems plaguing restauranteurs—from high labor costs to declining traffic. How to use breakthroughs such as big data and other disruptive technologies dominated our conversations at the 2018 National Restaurant Association trade show. 

In a recent research study conducted by Panasonic, nearly four out of five respondents stated they believed competitors in their own industry will pull ahead if they do not adopt or invest in disruptive technology. Seven in ten said they felt companies outside their industry could disrupt them. 

And these ideas were more pronounced in the food service, hospitality and retail industries. These sectors are more likely than others to say disruptive technologies are critical to the future success of their companies.

Connected restaurants

Across all industries, three of the top five adopted disruptive technologies are cloud, IoT and robotics. Each of these technologies plays a role in the connected kitchen, where appliances all sync to the cloud, communicate over a network, can be managed remotely and even using predictive analytics. Spyce, a new restaurant in Boston, is built around a robotic kitchen, and relies on cloud and IoT. The robotic kitchen “wirelessly collects multiple orders from a bank of self-service menu kiosks, displays the names of the guests whose orders are being prepared, pipes the various ingredients from refrigerated hoppers into a wok to be cooked and tossed, and dumps the hot meal into a compostable bowl waiting on the counter below,” according to a review in Salon. 

Labor is one of the costliest elements of running a restaurant and can eat up as much as 40 percent of a restaurant’s gross revenue, according to estimates. Software that has the capacity to collect and analyze data will the connecting element of automated processes and are already making it possible for labor intensive industries across the board to run more efficiently. MaryPat Sullivan, chief nursing officer at Overlook Medical Center in Summit, New Jersey, told Healthcare IT News earlier this year that the hospital network was able to save $70 million on operational costs by successfully employing predictive analytics. Software programs such as Panasonic’s Clearview platform have helped franchise owners of some of the largest QSR chains grow at a faster rate than their corporate-owned counterparts that still operate on legacy software. These functionalities integrated with the automation capabilities of PanaCIM are already changing the landscape of kitchen and back office interoperability.

icecream infograph

Personalizing experiences

Last month, we wrote about how the hospitality and retail industry are turning to artificial intelligence to create an increasingly nuanced personal experience for their customers. Of all the industries polled in our research, 90 percent say personalization is important to the future success of their company. Furthermore, they believe that the first step is to simplify the customer experience. But there is also a divide about what personalizing the customer experience entails. According to 40 percent of respondents, “personalizing” means making it simpler for customers to engage. Only 20 percent interpret this as “being able to customize services and offerings” by using customer data analytics to predict and impact purchase behavior. 

Personalization in ordering has contributed to the widespread interest and adoption of kiosks in the restaurant industry. McDonalds see kiosks as part its digital growth accelerator that will expand choices for how customers order, pay and are served, according to its latest annual report. Similarly, Subway also announced it was planning to introduce kiosks. In Texas, a number of Dairy Queen restaurants are already reaping benefits of self-service kiosks. 

Brands that have been early adopters of kiosks have reported that the average check size is up to 30 percent higher than at the counter. These kiosks don’t just allow the restaurant to continually upsell through the entire ordering process, but customers are also given the opportunity to fully customize their order, which leads to an increasingly personalized experience.

Authors
Jeff Pinc - Director of Food Services at Panasonic

Inside next-gen manufacturing

next gen factory

Inside next-gen manufacturing

5 minutes

In mid-February, the National Association of Manufacturers kicked off a cross-country trip visiting plants in more than a half-dozen states. The trip started in Troy, Michigan at “Automation Alley.” 

Job growth from Michigan to Buffalo, NY

The trip began as the business of making things faces major changes. Today American manufacturers need to fill some 364,000 jobs, according to a report from Deloitte and NAM. Panasonic manufacturing jobs are among them. In Buffalo, New York, Panasonic is partnering with Tesla in the production of solar cells for roof tiles—a product that integrates high-efficiency photovoltaics with roofing materials—and we’re looking for next-gen workers.

According to the Deloitte/NAM report, over the next couple of years, the number of manufacturing jobs in this country is expected to climb to 3.5 million. What kind of jobs will they be?

Our findings show that most of these new jobs will be created by small to mid-size manufacturers. The majority of American manufacturers are considered “small,” with fewer than 500 employees, according the U.S. Census Bureau. Its data shows that in 2015, there were 251,774 firms in the sector and all but 3,813 were defined as small. 

Disruptive tech in manufacturing

When these manufacturers create jobs tomorrow, they’ll have titles like supply chain specialist, manufacturing execution system developer, electrical technician and analyst. These titles relate to changes brought on by everything from supply chain automation to advanced robotics to artificial intelligence (AI). A few years ago, consulting firm McKinsey identified AI, advanced robotics and IoT among two dozen disruptive technologies that would account for trillions of dollars in economic value. Panasonic is deeply engaged in the advancement of almost half of these technologies. That’s important because when you’re creating experiences, chances are, you’re going to need to stitch together many of them into an integrated solution. Our future is focused on finding ways to apply our disruptive tech expertise to make radically new experiences possible. 

Factory work is becoming a new experience. From Automation Alley in Feb., NAM CEO Jay Timmons talked about how innovation is changing work: “Some people may think ‘automation’ and ‘job creation’ are mutually exclusive. That’s simply not true. Innovation is expanding opportunities and what American workers can do."

Millennials bring new skills to manufacturing

Manufacturers must think about how disruptive technologies will change the way they do business, operate plants and train workers. Automation, for instance, means that a worker will handle more responsibilities and needs additional skills to fulfill them. Big Data skills, for instance, are important to advanced manufacturing. Panasonic’s award-winning PanaCIM is a manufacturing execution system that creates an ecosystem connecting disparate islands of data across an enterprise—production data, MRP/ERP and legacy systems. Understanding and applying such data is key to operating the system.  Millennials (often defined as those now aged 20-40) come to manufacturing with new skills like MES management, but experts say that's just the start. “Millennials have already started changing the manufacturing and supply chains -- and for the better," according to an IndustryWeek report.

In support of growing manufacturers, Panasonic has invested heavily in its vision of a new manufacturing landscape–one that supports companies regardless of size, product mix or skill level. For instance, it designed its MES Manufacturing Execution System software to optimize the supply chain as a full-blown package and as an easy-to-install express system for companies with limited infrastructure. Panasonic introduced pick-and-place equipment that addresses the need for smaller lot sizes and tighter control over work in process and scheduling. Additionally, the Panasonic cloud9 Innovation Center, just outside Chicago, is a comprehensive facility where manufacturers can try out new applications, speak with experts and explore production hardware and complementary technology. 

Learn more about disruptive technology and manufacturing. 

Authors
Faisal Pandit - President of Panasonic Factory Solutions Co. of America